The title pretty much says it all.
I'm talking about bands that are/were so much more than just a band, bands that have/had their own culture behind them, so to speak. Bands like The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd, etc.

Personally, I don't think so. There are so many new music genres for people to get in to..

True deal... read the writings by people like Dave Kusek. Check out the statements at ArtistsHouseMusic.org and FutureofMusic.org

You've got to examine the reasons why Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd were so big. They were mass marketed product in an era when music had huge monetary value off the shelf. Music isn't worth today what it was 30 years ago. Today's biggest stars (Gaga, Bieber, etc) could never fill an 80,000 seat stadium to capacity and sell out the whole tour.

When the internet came along.
1. The big record companies lost their monopoly on mass distribution
2. kids share files and record\cd sales went way down.
3. The computer recording studio with cheap ,but workable gear killed
professional recording studio's income.
4. The world economy has been in the toilet last few years.
and on and on. On the other side....... There's still alittle money to be made.
We have to have famous musicians write and perform music we can relate to
in a mega way It's in our DNA Maybe the big rock stars of tomorrow will drive 2nd hand cars and be pretty broke. GT

Of course, JK Rowling was rejected by 12 publishers before she finally got her modest book deal.

Children's books don't make any money....

the future is unwritten.

That's not really the same sort of argument though. There can always be a statistical outlier, but that doesn't make the rule. I dunno if maybe children's books have been big again since JK Rowling or not, but the fact that she had a big one doesn't mean anything unless it changes the market in general.

And you are also talking about a market (books) in which the potential is there because it is still reasonably safe from the evils that are wearing away at music and starting on movies. In the music business, it's not a matter of you suddenly getting a bunch of people interested in your product, and then you suddenly have access to a large legal market. It's more like you get extra sales but also a huge amount of theft.

Andl also you are talking about children's products, where there's a much greater likelihood that the parent will buy the product for the child, and handing them a photocopied book just doesn't say I Love You very well. That's different from music for the prime teen market, which very much knows how to steal the product and tends to obtain it directly themselves, though some benefit will always come from a product that ends up heavily gifted I guess. Happy birthday, honey, Here copy anything you want off my Ipod.

The consensus is NO. Those band's level of success was the product of mass-marketing, major label distro and publication, and lack of competition in the market-place.

Today niches rule. Direct to fan distro. Intense market saturation. The mega bands of the 20th century were a fluke and will never happen again.

You are overlooking the strong songwriting and musicianship which are the primary factors which made those bands what they were - it sustains their international popularity and impressive sales to this day (and long into the future). 'We Are The Champions', 'I Am The Walrus' and 'Time' are classic masterpieces from an era when prolific, thematic, melodic songwriting was the prerequisite. Nowadays, songwriting is just a lame, frivolous, predictable trainwreck.

No supported by facts. You would like to ASSUME that those bands were so prolific because of their music but that was only a portion. Another portion of their success was the mentality of the market. The fact that those bands were the accessory of personal coolness as defined by the masses. Yes... I calling lots of those fans musical sheep led around by whatever their friends thought was cool.

There are songwriters today who write amazing and beautiful music but they have no market value because it was never the music that propelled groups to mega super-star status. It was the marketing, the limited choice, the limit of access, and the mass mentality of community that surrounded "the scene" which was often the creation of the PR department at the labels.

Today's top artists have to have multi-media appeal. It's not the music that matters, it's the multi-media package sold to niche markets.

Great song writers still exist... they just aren't valued by the industry or the fans. Here are a few...

Vienna Teng
Foxy Shazam
Radiohead
Norah Jones
There are millions... but they'll never be like Led Zep or Floyd b/c they don't have the machine behind them, and the people don't care enough to pay for the music.

Silly me. Of *course* their songs are just as good as the songs of Queen, The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. How could I have been so oblivious to the facts ? Mebbe my senses just weren't tingling properly...

Just as during the time of the Beatles and Pink Floyd you couldn't have guessed what todays industry and market conditions would be like, it is not so easy to predict what 40 years into the future will be like based on what we see now.

History repeats, and everything comes full circle, so my guess is yes, we will se that again. Maybe in our lifetime, maybe not.

History repeats, and everything comes full circle, so my guess is yes, we will se that again. Maybe in our lifetime, maybe not.

That's true... sometimes. Generic blanket statements don't always apply to everything. I'd contend that the mega-star status of those bands was a fluke and by-product of the marketing of the newly discovered recorded music product. Since then music product has been stripped of value, and the market doesn't support the same mass distribution needed to created mega-bands.

Traditionally music was more regional and was based on direct artist-fan or artist-patron relationships (smaller niches). History is repeating itself by returning to a similar model which was the norm since ancient times.

Silly me. Of *course* their songs are just as good as the songs of Queen, The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. How could I have been so oblivious to the facts ? Mebbe my senses just weren't tingling properly...

I'm a huge fan of all those bands, but I would put Radiohead and Vienna Teng's songs up there in terms of quality and tingle factor. Bands like Radiohead and Alanis Morrisette I think might have been the end of the line, the last big acts just before the end came. Tool also got in there before the cutoff. They still could get substantial investment because the ROI was still there if the act broke through.

An artist like Vienna Teng will never have that opportunity, because she came along a bit too late. What artist who is totally post-2000, and who isn't of the 'sell more burgers' type of artist has really managed to kill it?

Radiohead are massive. Tool are massive. Pantera were massive. There's some serious songwriting and musicianship there. We'll be OK as long as bands like that are around

Just to be clear... I'm not saying great music is dead. I'm not saying that there will not be famous musicians. I'm only saying that the days of MEGA-bands and SUPER-STARS are at an end. Think arena-sized venues...

Tool is big but they don't even break into the top 50 in terms of revenue or concert attendance. Same thing for Radiohead and Pantera. Check this out..

It's a list of the highest grossing concert tours (that can be verified). Notice Led Zeppelin isn't on the list but they have the Guiness record for single show with 79,000 people.

Sort the list Average Attendance, Attendance, or Gross. This is MEGA. Dispite some of these tours being in recent years, none of the bands were famous post-Napster (2004). Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga are the only exceptions.

Flash-back to before Napster (and file sharing which killed the machine)... All the mega bands were from that era. U2 is probably the only true MEGA band left.

With the exception of Gaga and Swift, the post Napster world does not create MEGA bands because there is not enough mass demand. It's all happening in smaller groups and customized to niche tastes.

In 2011, it's so hard to escape the PR bombardment, brainwashing people to 'Buy Beatles, Bow To Queen, Hail Led Zeppelin and Worship Pink Floyd'. But when you DO manage to avoid it, and avoid the hivemind that goes with it, you realize that those band's songs really aren't that good ! Just maintain your intellectual autonomy when the public relations bombardment of the evil dinosaur rock machine targets you on escalators, elevators, TV, and especially on public transit. With your mind clear, you can see that Vienna Teng, Foxy Shazam, Radiohead and Norah Jones rock just as hard and write classic songs just as well.

In 2011, it's so hard to escape the PR bombardment, brainwashing people to 'Buy Beatles, Bow To Queen, Hail Led Zeppelin and Worship Pink Floyd'. But when you DO manage to avoid it, and avoid the hivemind that goes with it, you realize that those band's songs really aren't that good ! Just maintain your intellectual autonomy when the public relations bombardment of the evil dinosaur rock machine targets you on escalators, elevators, TV, and especially on public transit. With your mind clear, you can see that Vienna Teng, Foxy Shazam, Radiohead and Norah Jones rock just as hard and write classic songs just as well.

Really? Will any of those bands have 50+ classic songs in 50 years? Because that's what the Beatles have managed to pull off. Even if marketing is responsible for the hype, there is substance there.

But we are not able to navigate metropolis like Spidey. His mask shields him from the subliminal messages, allowing him to recognize those dino-rock songs as overrated sonic hype. He can also dart around those huge Queen, Beatles, Led Zep and Pink Floyd billboards (which are all around NYC) with graceful ease.

Really? Will any of those bands have 50+ classic songs in 50 years? Because that's what the Beatles have managed to pull off. Even if marketing is responsible for the hype, there is substance there.

NO... there are too many quality products in today's marketplace and too short an attention span for the fan base. Part of the Beatles success was their limited competition in the Boy-Band category.

Despite their songs being classics... many, if not most, children today don't know and, once exposed, don't like those songs. "Penny Lane" doesn't fly for modern kids. Great in their day.... classics to be studied for eternity...wouldn't be a "huge" rock band in today's musical landscape. Musical substance doesn't make a "huge rock band."

I'm with Spiderman in the sense that I don't listen to Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Beatles or Queen by choice... I just don't like their music at all. I do listen to AC/DC and that's about it. That being said, I wasn't born in that kind of era.

Also, I don't like Spiderman either so. Never understood the whole "guy in a spandex" type.

Too many genres today. Back in the 70's, radio stations played rock, r&b and folk right next to each other. "Black Dog" into "Let's Stay Together" into "time In a Bottle". When "Bohemian Rapsody" came out, my father loved it!

The market is so fragmented now that there is no way to continually draw enough people to a theatre, let alone a stadium tour. Them days are over and done.